Film looks at living link to klezmer tradition

Drummer Elaine Hoffman Watts, still smoothly rolling on a snare in her eighth decade, will perform with trumpet-playing daughter Susan Lankin Watts after Saturday's premiere of the film

Eatala: A Life in Klezmer

. How fitting.

The Philadelphia Folklore Project-produced documentary, screening at West Philly's Calvary Center, focuses on Watts, a living link to a vintage, Philly-associated style of klezmer, the festive Jewish music with Eastern European roots. (In klezmer context, this "Philadelphia Sound" refers to a more measured aesthetic, significantly Ukrainian in origin, rather than the more prevalent Russian/Polish styles.)

Watts was born a Hoffman in 1932, the family already prominent in Philadelphia's klezmer circles. Her busy father, Jacob - a gifted musician who played piano for silent films and xylophone in the Philadelphia Orchestra under Leo Stokowski and backed top stars during the thriving Jewish theater era - had drumsticks in Elaine's hands by age 2. She was a seasoned drummer before learning to read music at age 12; she became the first woman percussionist accepted at the Curtis Institute of Music, graduating in 1954.

But Watts never forgot her klezmer roots, passing on the tradition to students and offspring (including fifth-generation klezmorim grandchildren). She received a Pew Fellowship in 2000, and, in 2007, a National Heritage Award from the National Endowment of the Arts.

The documentary - codirected by Barry Dornfeld and Philadelphia Folklore Project founder/director Debora Kodish - is titled after a song Jacob Hoffman wrote for his daughter based on her Hebrew name. On camera, Watts explains how her immigrant grandfather Joseph initially preserved popular Philadelphia klezmer in 1927, by writing down all the songs he knew in book form - "and I kept it, for all these years."

During the film, old home movies are sometimes hauntingly projected over recent concert footage of mother, daughter, and friends. A feisty Watts is seen setting up one saved song with a particularly poignant touch: "This piece is called 'Bogopolie,' [which was where] my grandmom came from. . . . the Nazis wiped this little town off the map - and we're gonna play it, to keep it on the map."

Historical preservation knows many forms.